


Bridge Burner Music

by jericho



Category: Canadian Music RPF, Canrock, Matthew Good Band
Genre: Band Fic, Canada, M/M, Musicians, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 08:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10331081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jericho/pseuds/jericho
Summary: Matt tries to figure out on the lonely road without Dave what went wrong.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2003. It's old and rusty now.

The tour Matt's on when the U.S. invades Iraq isn't really the first on his own. The band broke up at the tail end of recording _The Audio of Being_ , leaving Matt, Rich and whatever band they could piece together to take it on the road. The other two were long gone by then, travelling their own roads, going in directions that did not include the dictator that was Matt Good, the real asshole who had made one of them cry.

It is the first tour, however, that Matt can remember feeling this numb and cold all over. It's the first tour where the bed seems huge and everyone distant. It's like he's touring by himself and the crew and band are Doozers, moving around him as if they're computerized. He sits on the hotel bed watching _The Fifth Estate_. The camera pans down a dirt street in an Iraqi village where Kurdish kids lay dead, eyes staring blankly at the sky, killed by poisonous gas sprayed by American made helicopters. His stomach makes a rolling beach ball motion. "You're obsessed with that," his mother said on the phone earlier that week. "Tell Rich not to let you watch so much CNN." Rich is the only one left for this tour who knows his mom.

He manages to turn it off himself, cleaning the dust from around the remote control buttons with one of his bitten down thumb nails. He tries to quell the nagging feeling that he's missing something important by leaving it off.

Matt met a producer at a party ages ago, circa _Last of the Ghetto Astronauts_. The producer had a girl hanging off him who looked 14 as he explained the merits of keeping songs under the four-minute mark. "Being in a band is just one big act of diplomacy," he said. "It's like government." The girl got up to get him another drink, and just in case Matt had been too dumb to get it already, he continued with the metaphor. "That'd make you the president."

"Or prime minister," Matt said, mostly to himself.

"Huh?"

"Prime minister, if it's a Canadian band."

"Oh. Right. Well, whatever."

It's been a year and a half without talking to Dave. A year and a half after severing a friendship and leaving it dangling out in space, twitching and nervous and unresolved. People have moved in and out of Matt's life like Via trains, on their own schedules and moving on to the next point of interest. He finishes with them, or they finish with him, and there are no visible wounds to speak of, no tugged-off Band Aids or misunderstanding. It was the first time in Matt's life, at least that he can recall, that an actual friendship ended. His interviews are laced with the kind of bitterness reserved for bitchy ex lovers or people who have lost massive court cases. "The record is shit. Everything fell apart and we all became assholes." He lies in bed at night sometimes and de-constructs it in his mind, shuffling facts and memories and snippets of conversation around like Lego blocks, conducting an inquest and trying to understand. 

If he were a little less analytical, a little less of a control freak, he could probably let it go. He continuously uncovers new pieces previously unconsidered, and it is never a good feeling.

***

Matt was in the studio, guitar balancing in his lap and pick clenched between his teeth, when he realized they were making four different records. Dave was in the next room, on the other side of the plate glass, laying one of his guitar tracks. It was raucous and messy, clinking like chain links, undeniably Dave, undeniably talented, but so fucking wrong for the song that Matt couldn't believe his ears.

"Stop," he said. The engineer looked at him dubiously, familiar with that order by now and the events that followed. He stopped the music, and Dave's fingers on the fret board eventually slowed and stopped. He gave the booth an exasperated look and Matt seized the moment. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Ballet." Sarcasm, then a pause. "What the fuck do you think I'm doing?"

Their eyes locked through the smudged glass, and they didn't even need to say anything. "That's not going on the fucking album," Matt said. And why not? They were, very simply, Matt's songs. He had envisioned them and nourished them from the initial jingle in his head to hammering out chords and harmonies on a practice guitar in his bedroom. It had been difficult just to bring them in to the other three guys, let alone watch them put their dirty fingerprints all over his pristine melodies. "Band," Dave had said several times during recording. "It's Matthew Good _Band_. There are four of us." Matt couldn't explain his newfound sense of ownership over his writing, or why it was suddenly twice as personal has it had been in the past. 

He waited for the counter attack. Dave lifted the guitar, bowing his head so the strap could come over it, and set it on the ground. "Forget it," he said. "Just...I'm not doing this again. Forget it."

The engineer looked at Matt for some kind of direction, but Matt grimaced at the floor. "Prick." 

He knew he could follow Dave, and that would lead to a voice-raising, finger-pointing argument. Dave had brought song ideas to the table, but quite honestly, they weren't as good. He'd always been the one to come in and add structure to Matt's ideas, and it wasn't needed anymore. It was as if Matt was going for pre- _Kid A_ Radiohead and Dave was aiming for AC/DC. When Matt told Dave this comparison before, Dave remained silent but extended his middle finger in Matt's direction. They both loved AC/DC, and had spent many long hours over the years discussing the best AC/DC tune, but when Matt said that was what Dave sounded like, he meant it was generic and vanilla and the same sound on repeat.

There were no other words, so "prick" echoed through Matt's head. And he followed Dave anyway.

Dave was climbing into his little blue Miata, a rental because someone had rear-ended him at a stop light a week before and it resulted in $1,000 worth of damage. His insurance company paid for it, and Dave was without transportation for approximately two hours, but it was another example of the way things were going.

Dave looked at Matt but slammed the door shut anyway. The window was up, but Matt could hear a muffled Garbage song when Dave started the car. He stood next to it, watching calmly as Dave scowled at the dashboard, then bit the inside of his cheek and shook his head in annoyance. Finally the window slid down. "What?"

"I thought maybe we could do lunch."

"You're so fucking hilarious." There was a whirring sound, and the window smoothly ascended toward a closed position. Dave sat there again, car idling, song still going. _I am lost so I am cruel..._ Matt didn't move.

The window went down again, and this time Dave looked him in the eyes. Dave's eyes were distinctive in a way Matt couldn't describe. Almond shaped, dark as 8 balls, but when he laughed they gleamed to the point of insanity. Like many times during their friendship, their eyes locked and clashed, and Matt pretended it didn't faze him.

"If you want to be a solo artist," Dave said, "then you should be a fucking solo artist. None of this band bullshit. It's wasting everyone's time."

Matt watched Dave grab his cigarettes off the seat. He'd left them in the Miata because Matt had declared that smoking wasn't allowed in the studio. "You're just pissed off because we didn't use more of your ideas."

Dave took a drag and blew smoke at the windshield. "No," he said, again doing the barely noticeable head shake. "No, you don't...." Matt waited patiently, imagining the gears grinding in Dave's head as he searched for the right words. "Yeah," Dave finally said. "Yeah, maybe I am a little pissed off about that. And why wouldn't I be? This is supposed to be a collaboration of four people, not one guy and a back up band. And we've been over this so many times, and you just don't...you don't get it. It's like there's a mental block on your head that literally prevents you from getting it."

"You could always leave the band again," Matt said. "That really worked last time."

"Fuck you." Those two words were immediate, born of gut reaction. Then came the calculated move. Dave's head turned and their eyes locked again, and the emotion in them screamed at Matt. Disdain, anger, like he didn't care if Matt lived or died, and Matt stifled a shiver. 

_...but I'd be love and sweetness if I had you...._

***

In the 1980s, during the Reagan regime, the United States was buddies with Iraq. This is being discussed on TV. Matt has turned it on again. One of Reagan's former honchos says he really couldn't understand how the States thought Saddam could be a useful man, and how they sold him the antidote to nerve gas without once thinking about why he would need it. "It was not phrased so clearly at the time," one of the Reagan guys said with a blank look.

If he's not careful, the images and facts will consume him. He writes about these things because he has no choice. Manifestos and diary entries and chunks of novels and columns and future chapters in books burn inside of him and he vents them as often as he needs to, on stage or online or in wire-coiled notebooks. He knows it's impossible for a man to escape the world in which he lives.

It's a night off, and he writes something on his laptop before he forces himself to change the channel. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Hours, an assortment of porn. He selects The Hours and knows this will be $10 on his hotel bill.

Lying there, his mind drifts back to the inquest. The studio scene. _Fuck you._ No, no, that memory is no good. Farther back, farther back....

***

It was the tour for _Underdogs_ , two CD's before _The Audio of Being_ and two before they officially wanted to kill each other. Ten of the 13 songs had a blanket songwriting credit - "Good/Genn." Only two were written solely by Matt. Matt's mark was Dunharrow Music, Dave's Bridgeburner Music, usually separated by a slash.

They were in Edmonton, in the parking lot of the venue, which was essentially a big bar with watered-down beer and an odd mixture of beefy guys in their thirties and kids with green hair and septum piercings. They wove between the cars, Matt dragging on Dave's cigarette until Dave finally turned and wanted it back. Dave looked up at the damp black sky, and it accentuated everything - Adam's Apple, slender neck, pale skin and black hair that fell perfectly into place when Dave ran his hand through it. "It's going to rain."

"Nah," Matt said. "Not enough clouds."

"So now you're the fucking weather man, too."

"You started it with the fucking weather talk."

Dave rolled his eyes, pretending to be annoyed, but it turned into another one of his weird faces. He was rivaled only by Jim Carrey in his ability to make someone laugh just by twisting his features into some weird expression. 

The bus was sleek and black and impressive looking from the outside from crammed with pillows and dirty socks and CD cases on the inside. They were the first ones in, the first to escape the afterparty, and everything was quiet and still. Dave was wearing a white button-down shirt with an eggshell retro 60s design on it, and every time his shoulders moved in front of Matt, the pattern changed. Dave's neck was in front of him, exposed and pale and smelling of adrenaline and faint cologne, and Matt put his hands on Dave's shoulders as he touched his lips to a spot just over Dave's jugular.

"Oh, here we go," Dave said in mock exasperation, but turned easily and stood with his back to the wall, pulling Matt against him and kissing him. Dave had started this, the kissing and groping and being gay when no one was watching. It hadn't been hard to talk Matt into it, and now that he had, Matt was pretty much insatiable.

He fumbled with the button on Dave's jeans, then tugged down the zipper. The jeans loosened around Dave's waist, and he reached in and rubbed the palm of his hand over Dave's fledgling erection. Dave laughed a little, suddenly breathless. "You want that, do you?"

Matt didn't answer, just opened his lips against Dave's collarbone and sucked at it lightly.

"Okay," Dave said, fingers moving through Matt's hair, hand on Matt's waist pulling him tighter against him. "But it'll cost you. You can just leave the money on the dresser when it's over."

A light, tapping sound came from the back of Matt's throat sounding a lot like "ha," but he wasn't interested in banter. They stumbled back to one of the bunks, a cramped space for sex by anyone's standards, but neither of them were particularly large guys, and they'd made it work before. They piled in on top of crumpled blankets, arms encircling one another, Matt on top with Dave's warm body underneath of him, like an electric blanket on a cold night. Dave's legs went on either side of Matt, their bodies tangling up in the sheets and clothes coming loose and being discarded. The familiar warmth was reward for a long night in the open, drenched in sweat and around the stench of beer, smoking too many cigarettes and belting out a long set of songs. Dave's arms slid around his shoulders and pulled him down, holding him close, their mouths busy sucking and biting each other's lips, leaving teasing little nips on pale, exposed skin. This was what made it all worth it, this moment of bonding, of being as close to another human being as possible so that it filled the empty space inside.

The sound of creaking metal bounced through the crowded tour bus, originating at the door at the front. Matt's breath caught in his throat and he looked down at Dave. "Up," Dave whispered frantically. "Off."

Matt rolled off and almost fell on his ass, darting across to his own bunk in time for Rich to appear. Rich looked from one to the other, eyelids drooping drunkenly. "What's goin' on?"

"Nothing." They said it in unison, but that wasn't unusual. 

Rich was followed by Ian, and more voices up at the front, and it was too late. They hadn't been fast enough.

Matt pulled the curtain back so he was lying in his little rectangle of darkness, like a bunker from the world outside. He sighed and rested his arm across his forehead, the spots where Dave had touched him still throbbing from the memory. He could get up and join everyone else, but there was nothing he wanted to be doing but what had been interrupted, so he lie there semi-pissed off until he fell asleep in that position.

He woke up to darkness and the steady hum of the bus going down the highway. He heard deep, methodic breathing of sleeping people. He hit the little Indiglo light on his watch and it bathed the slowly ticking face in Kryptonite green. 4:07 a.m.

He pulled the curtain back enough to look across the aisle at Dave's bunk, and wasn't surprised to see Dave's curtain pulled back a little too. Dave was on his side facing Matt, eyes open and gleaming in the darkness. It reminded Matt of when the cat he had as a kid would hide under the couch, and he would crouch and rest his head on the floor, lifting the skirt and seeing the cat in the cramped, claustrophobic darkness, blinking back at him. Matt smiled across the aisle and Dave smiled back.

"I can't sleep," Dave whispered.

"Yeah." Silence, and more sleepy mumbles and bumps on the highway. "Can you imagine doing this all your life? Sleeping on a bus, being homesick 24/7..."

"Yeah." Dave looked up at the bunk above Matt, and then back down again, and their eyes met. He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. You'll always have me to bug you." 

Matt smirked. "Great. That's just what I need."

"Isn't it?" Dave's tone went from playful to serious in two words. "Sometimes I feel like you don't need me here at all."

"Don't be stupid," Matt said, more harshly than he'd intended, so he tried to soften it. "Of course I do."

Dave chewed his lip, his shaded eyes thick with unexpressed thoughts. "You should tell me that more often." His lips curled into a bemused smile, like he was kidding. And maybe he was.

Matt wasn't sure what to do with this little exchange, and before too long, the moment had faded. He drifted off again, surrounded by hushed darkness, and if only for that night, there was peace.

***

Bridgeburner Music. Bridge burner. Matt has never realized that one. It's another prophetic piece of the puzzle that he should have seen coming. 

He wakes up that morning, ready for the knock on the door that will coax him out of the room and onto the bus to get to the next city. They're the same cities he's been playing for years, little dots across a map of cold terrain and identical roads - Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa. 

The TV tells a drastically different story from the night before. CNN and Newsworld and every other network as far as the remote control will take him are showing a huge statue of Saddam Hussein yanked from its upright position and into an obtuse angle from its podium. The statue reaches toward the ground, and the crowd under it screams madly, flags waving and kids climbing onto cement barriers to scream for the American cameras. Rich comes in a few minutes later, a heavy canvass bag around his shoulder, and looks at the screen. "Wow."

"Yeah" is all Matt can say.

"Can you imagine the leader of your country being that much of an asshole?" Rich turns toward the door, and then, as an afterthought: "It fucks it up for the whole country."

Hitler blew his own brains out when he knew the allies were closing in. Troops who had sworn an oath to him were still fighting on the front lines, and Hitler took the easy way out. Matt figures if he were Hitler, he would have put on a uniform, grabbed a gun and gone in fighting, finishing what he started if he wanted to die anyway. The least he could have done was sat in a corner with a shotgun pointed at the door and taken out as many of those bastard Russians as possible in the name of his cause. Instead, he poisoned his dog, then his girlfriend, and surrendered to fate like the pussy he was. Matt wonders if Saddam Hussein was in one of those palaces as the Americans inched closer, artillery blaring and tanks firing, knowing that the end was near, and shot himself. It's doubtful though. Matt figures that's the big difference with dictators now. The ones of old knew when to throw in the towel. The ones today are like cockroaches, scrambling into any nook and cranny, living life the dirty way.

He walks over the freshly vacuumed carpet of the hallway to the elevator. The shiny metal doors slide open silently, and he steps inside. The older man next to him steps backward to not be hit with Matt's shoulder bag when he swings around. The button is pushed, and then a gentle drop. They ascend a few floors, a little protected metal box taking them to the chaos of the main floor. 

Once they're out at the bus, one of the crew members with long frizzy red hair tied back into a haphazard ponytail motions to him about some miscellaneous tour detail. "So what do you wanna do with this?"

Another couple of people turn, and Matt feels the eyes on him, waiting for his word. It's the routine: he gives instructions, they carry them out. Even Rich is there, ready to step onto the bus. Rich turns and looks at him strangely, and suddenly the world is noiseless. Why is he looking at him that way? What does he want from him? 

More white noise, more blank space, more dead air. He stands and thinks, watches everyone around him, tries to formulate an answer when he doesn't even remember what the question is. Why does everyone expect him to know? He's not fucking perfect.

Rich's hand is thick and tense on Matt's arm. "Hey," he says in his down-home baritone voice, and it cuts through the cushion of unreality. "Earth to Matt."

"I don't have any fucking answers," Matt says suddenly, and snaps his head to the side to look at the roadie. "Okay? Figure it out for your fucking self. I don't have any of the answers."

The roadie walks away quickly like a man running from a fight. Matt can't even remember what the guy asked him.

No one talks to him on the bus, and he prefers that. Instead his line of sight remains fixed somewhere on the other side of the window, the pavement and cookie-cutter houses and foundries a hurried blur in his peripheral vision. 

_You should tell me that more often._

He arrives at his final conclusion, lanky legs tucked against his chest, the monotonous world outside like a harrowing slide show. It really may have been that easy. _I need you,_ he could have said. _I want you here. You mean more to me than this._ He must have known that then, somehow. So why didn't he?

The revelation thickens the lump in his throat, picks at his tear ducts and threatening uncontrollable, anxious emotion. Sleeping on a bus. Being homesick 24/7. He should call him. He will.

He takes his cell phone out of his shoulder bag and sets it on his bony knees. Green button on the left, red button on the right. It is the most self explanatory piece of equipment ever. Dave's number is programmed into it. He hasn't even spoken to Dave since he got this phone, but he put the number in there anyway. In case he ever needed it. In case he could ever get over the fear of needing it.

He knows he'll get Dave's voicemail. Dave used to carry his phone with him everywhere but never have it on. He hated it ringing while he was having a conversation with someone. He considered it rude. 

It's three easy words. How hard can they be? _I need you. I need you._ Matt practices them a couple of times, seeing how they roll off his tongue. Distant and muffled ringing shoots through communication towers, bouncing off radio waves, transmitting the sound from where Dave is to the bus going down the highway. The final ring is cut short.

"Hello?"

Matt hits the red button and the phone goes dead, Dave's number disappearing from the lighted panel. It takes two or three minutes for Matt's breathing to go back to normal, even longer for his heart to stop pounding. Surrender will never come, and with that, neither will freedom. 

He imagines what he must look like when Rich comes in, his knees curled to his chest, his head down and his hands clapsed behind it. Turtle mode. Rich sits next to him, strong hand on Matt's arm again, pulling it away. Matt resists.

"Come on," Rich says, and it's implied in his tone. No more depressing news footage for him. 

But it's not that. There's a lot more, buried beneath the armour, with all the memories and confusion. Matt looks at Rich, whose eyes are calm as he still hangs on to Matt's arm, and suddenly, there is so much to tell him.


End file.
